Paris Climate Change Conference 2015

On 12 December 2015, a global climate deal was agreed by 195 countries at the United Nations climate change conference held in Paris. Known as the ‘Paris Agreement’, the deal aims to limit the long-term rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and also contained an aspiration to further limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In order to achieve these long-term temperature goals, the Paris Agreement calls on countries to “reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible”, and to achieve a balance between the amount of carbon emitted by human activity and what can be absorbed by the environment between 2050 and 2100.